NCJ Number
100664
Date Published
1986
Length
17 pages
Annotation
This paper examines the Soviet strategy to destabilize Turkey through a terrorist operation financed largely through Bulgaria's (a Soviet proxy) joint arms and drug smuggling with Turkish organized crime figures.
Abstract
A review of the Soviet strategy to destabilize Turkey traces relevant events beginning in the 1960's and issuing in the first wave of Turkish terrorism from 1969 until 1971, when military intervention stalled the terrorist effort. The description of the second wave of terrorism, which began in 1975, details the alliance between Bulgaria and Turkish organized crime figures to traffic in arms and drugs, with profits used to finance the terrorist effort in Turkey, estimated to have cost no less than $1 billion. Evidence of this alliance is reported from the Turkish military's investigation following the second military intervention to halt terrorist activity. Information supplied by Mehmet Ali Agca upon his arrest for the attempted assassination of the Pope is also used to document the Bulgarian-organized crime alliance in financing Turkish terrorism. This alliance of a Soviet ally with drug traffickers in the interest of destabilizing the United States and its allies is also cited as a pattern in Cuban and Nicaraguan subversive efforts. 30 notes.